


Time and Twinford (the unlimited rice pudding remix)

by TheBigCat



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Ruby Redfort Series - Lauren Child
Genre: Adventure, Crossover, Daleks - Freeform, Dr Nyarlathotep, Gen, Metaphors, Time Travel, if you don't know what that tag means don't worry, it's only very minor anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-03-22 23:15:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13774665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBigCat/pseuds/TheBigCat
Summary: “Time,” the Doctor says, “is like this cup of tea.”





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Throughout All Of Time And Twinford](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/359301) by blackers-donuts. 



> Remix of ‘Through all of Time and Twinford’ by blackers-donuts on Tumblr! Not a very cohesive plot, and it rambles considerably in places, but all I wanted was for these guys to meet up and trade some clever quips (and explosions). I don’t know how well I succeeded, and this ended up much longer than I anticipated. Oh well. Enjoy!
> 
> Also, please excuse all the metaphors and allusions. Turns out I’m just as fond as those things as Seven is; I swear it’s like we share the same head sometimes...

Ruby sees the woman for the first time during lunch on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, although ‘first time’ is probably the wrong phrase to use. Rather, Ruby recognizes the woman there and then, and she is thrown momentarily because she hadn’t ever expected to see her again – not now, not ever. It’s only through the fence – through the barrier separating the school from the street outside – so she could have easily been mistaken for thinking that tall, glamorous figure is who she thinks it is.

But then the woman turns, head swivelling smoothly and almost mechanically, like a sniper sighting her prey, and then the rest of her body turns too and she lowers her large, oversized sunglasses to meet Ruby’s eyes properly.

And she winks.

And she smiles.

It’s a horrible little smile, one that promises all numbers of nasty things. Ruby shivers all over, and instead of waiting for something terrible or inevitable to happen, grabs the arm of the person closest to her – who happens to be Clancy Crew.

“Quick,” she says, wiping the rain off her glasses, which are quickly beginning to drip with water, and she gestures wildly to the street beyond the gates. “The woman. Out there – can you see her?”

Clancy squints and stares and glances and really does try to look, but the rain’s picking up again and there doesn’t appear to be anybody on the street anymore. “I can’t see any woman, Rube. You sure you saw someone?”

“I – ” Ruby shrugs, and then nudges him with her elbow. “Let’s get inside. C’mon, I’m soaked through.”

He acquiesces easily enough, although he keeps shooting her questioning glances all the way back to fifth-period Double English. “Seriously, Ruby, you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Ruby shrugs again, and says something evasive and distracting, and before long, they’re talking about something inane and unimportant. But she’s not okay, not really, because Clancy is more on the nose than he realizes. She _has_ seen a ghost, or perhaps a dead woman walking. But it has to be just her imagination, or another trick or disguise, because Ruby Redfort doesn’t believe in ghosts.

And there is absolutely no way that Valerie Nine-Lives Capaldi, who has been dead for nearly a year, could be walking the streets of Twinford at this very moment.

* * *

 

The day progresses.

Ruby is called out to Spectrum later that afternoon to work a case (something minor, something comparatively important), and although Hitch gives her suspicious glances in the car and asks why she’s being so quiet, she doesn’t tell him what happened at lunch. Not because she doesn’t trust him, really, it’s more that she doesn’t trust herself. Not after everything that’s happened. Who’s to say she hasn’t finally cracked?

She and Blacker and Froghorn spend a happy hour or two cracking a code based on sequential logarithms, and it’s sufficiently complicated to take her mind off things. It’s good fun, really, and between the three of them, they’re capable enough to bend even the most strongly-encoded message into submission. (Ruby takes particular delight in making fun of Froghorn’s lack of understanding as to how flip-flop diagrams work. It’s leaning towards the cruel, maybe, but come _on,_ any first-year engineering student should be able to understand this stuff.

“We need the computing team on this,” says Blacker when they’re nearing the end of the code-breaking process, and glances at the pages that he’s still yet to get through. He grimaces. “Can one of you take a message?”

“Don’t we have people to do this for us – ” Froghorn begins to complain.

“I’ll do it,” Ruby says. She ignores their surprised looks, and waits as Blacker scribbles out a messy Post-It note and tacks it to their near-completed work.

“No detours,” he says, not entire sternly, and pokes her arm. “Seriously, if it turns out that you ended up in the gadget room again –”

She rolls her eyes; pokes him back. “I _know_.”

“Do you really, though?” He delivers another friendly poke, this time to her nose. “Green three-three-six. West from here, shouldn’t take you longer than ten minutes.

“I’ve _got_ it! Seriously, you’d think you guys don’t trust me or something.”

Froghorn makes a little noise that’s somewhere between amusement and mockery. “Funny, that,” he says. “I wonder what set of extraordinary circumstances could have preceded _this_ startling revelation – ”

Ruby throws an eraser at him, and leaves.

“I’m giving you twenty minutes, then I’m coming to find you!” she hears called in her direction.

“Got it!”

Green 336 is west, but it’s hard to tell directions in the underground labyrinth that is Spectrum Eight. Through entirely no fault of her own (she seriously did intend to go to Computing, although she knows nobody’s going to believe her later) she ends up in Purple, wondering where she made a wrong turn. Even after all this time, Spectrum’s mapping system has somewhat eluded her in terms of logic. She knows that she’s now in the area that’s reserved for chemistry and other such sciences, but to get from here to Computing – and then back to Coding – well. That’s going to be a task in and of itself, and she doesn’t want to take too long about it, or Blacker’s going to come looking for her, and that’ll just be plain embarrassing.

She swallows her pride, and starts opening doors, intending to ask for directions. She’s hoping she’ll stumble across SJ, or somebody else she knows who will point her towards the appropriate hallway.

The first person she stumbles across, however, is a young woman of around 17 years of age standing in a clean, abandoned-looking lab, facing away from the door. There’s several sets of beakers and test tubes in front of her, and there’s a Bunsen Burner that’s heating up some unidentifiable substance, but she’s barely focused on her science experiment, which isn’t very safe lab etiquette – and come to think of it, she’s not wearing safety goggles or any sort of lab coat either.  Instead, she appears to be talking to somebody who isn’t actually there.

“I’m telling you; I haven’t seen her!” she’s saying, and she’s turned just enough that Ruby can see her frowning at nothing. “And I think I’d notice – ”

She looks like she’s talking into some kind of wireless phone, and she hasn’t noticed the door opening. Ruby steps through into the room, and folds her arms, waiting for the girl to finish her conversation so she can ask for those directions.

“I’m keeping an eye out, definitely,” she says, a note of exasperation clear in her voice. “I _am._ Seriously. Don’t worry. I’ll call you at the first sign of trouble, come on, stop _fussing…_ ”

There’s a beat as she listens, and then she rolls her eyes. “ _Sure_ you don’t, Professor.” She’s smiling now. Ruby takes the opportunity to observe this girl. She doesn’t look very old – definitely on the younger end, maybe even still a teenager, and judging by the accent, she’s from somewhere in Britain – weird. And then there’s the jacket – not professional in the least, a big black bomber jacket that’s covered in all number of patches and badges that jingle when she moves.

“Don’t worry about me, I’m ace,” the girl says. Ruby eyes the legend on the back of her jacket, which says much the same – ACE, in big curling letters. “The chemistry lab is well-wicked, Professor, there’s _so much stuff –_ the damage I could make with this-!”

And then she winces, holding her device away slightly from her ear. Apparently, whoever’s on the other end is upset. “I – alright, but _come on._ If we’re dealing with zombies or whatever it is that they told us about; I think some good old-fashioned Nitro-Nine would be _just_ the thing!” Another pause, this time accompanied with a guilty glance at her in-progress experiment. “...all right,” she concludes. It sounds like she’s sulking, but just a bit. “Whatever you say. I’ll check up on the other departments, stay low-key, all that. I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry!” And then, with a touch more enthusiasm. “See you later, Professor!”

She clicks off whatever it is she’s holding, grinning absently at nothing – and then spins around suddenly, noticing Ruby’s presence. “Oi! What’re you doing in here?”

Ruby takes a hasty step back, raising her free hand, unoccupied by the paperwork, in a gesture of peace. “Sorry,” she says, not expecting this much hostility right off the bat, “I was just looking for directions – ”

“How much of that did you hear?” the girl demands, eyes narrowed. “Were you spying on me?”

“I don’t know,” says Ruby, mirroring the narrowed eyes. “Was anything you said _worth_ spying on?”

The girl stares at her for a moment, and then something explodes behind her, and she lets out a short, angry curse, whirling around to face her experiment, which is now very much on fire. “Oh hell, I should’ve been paying attention. _Uh –_ ”

Ruby slams her paperwork down onto a nearby table and dashes across the room, leaping several desks and a chair to get to the fire extinguisher and pile of safety goggles. She rips the extinguisher off the wall, and tosses one pair of goggles over to the girl (who catches them easily), slipping the other on over her own regular glasses. And then she stares at the extinguisher in momentary confusion. “How do you use this thing?”

“Give it here!” says the British girl, scrambling over to her. With practiced ease, she sprays the fire with chemical foam, dousing it and putting it out, and then she slumps against a counter with a moan. “The Professor’s gonna kill me if he finds out about this,” she proclaims. “He’s always on about ‘ _acceptable lab safety_ ’ and ‘ _not setting things on fire without proper supervision’_ – ”

“Well, if this sorta thing happens often,” says Ruby, looking at the mess, “I really don’t blame him, if you know what I mean.”

“You distracted me!” says the girl acidly.

“You were on the _phone_ during a science experiment!” Ruby shoots back. “Big no-no!”

They stare at each other for a moment.

“It was a pretty ace explosion, though,” says the girl thoughtfully, tapping her fingers against the tabletop.

Ruby can’t argue with that. She nods, grinning. “It _was_ great,” she says. Explosions are great, usually, and this one’s definitely not an exception to that.

“Nice shirt,” says the girl, beaming, and sticks out a hand quite suddenly. Ruby takes it uncertainly, and shakes. She has a strong, firm grip. “You like donuts, huh?”

“Who doesn’t?” says Ruby, her own grin increasing. Her shirt today simply reads ‘DONUT WORRY – BE SASSY’. It’s on the kinder end of her wide selection of sarcastic, witty t-shirts, but it’s definitely one of her favorite too. “Nice jacket!”

“Thanks!” says the girl, and adjusts it proudly. “I’m Ace.” Ruby’s not sure if that’s a statement of intent, or an introduction. Judging by her personality so far, it could easily be either. “Nice to meet you, Carrots,” she adds, which throws Ruby for a loop – the nickname comes out of seemingly nowhere.

“I’m Ruby, not Carrots,” she says, to which Ace just shrugs and grins. “Are you new here? I haven’t seen you around Spectrum before.”

A brief, unreadable expression passes over Ace’s face. It quickly clears. “Transferred from another department in England. I’m here as a – consultant, I guess? Anyway,” she says, frowning, “what are _you_ doing here? Aren’t you a bit young to be working at… well, you know?”

“Aren’t _you_ a bit too old to be playing with chemicals without safety equipment?” Ruby shoots back.

“Oh, touché,” acknowledges Ace with a grin, and sets about rearranging the partially broken remains of her science experiment back on the counter. She’s very careful about it, too, skirting neatly around the chemicals that look like they might be corrosive. Ruby watches from a safe distance. “What’cha say you were looking for?”

“Oh! _Uh –_ ” Ruby wracks her brain, trying to remember what she’s actually meant to be doing. “ – _right._ I don’t know if you’ll know, seeing that you’re new and all, but would you know where Computing is? Specifically… uh, Green 336?”

“Huh.” Ace runs a hand through her hair, twisting her messy ponytail back and forth. She flashes a bright smile at Ruby. “Y’know, Carrots, I think I just might!”

Ace gives Ruby directions – quite detailed ones, and she sounds so confident about what she’s saying that Ruby feels confident that she’ll get where she needs to go, and in plenty of time too.

And after ten minutes of wandering, Ruby ends up in LB’s office, and subsequently resolves to complain endlessly at Ace when she sees her next. There’s absolutely no way she’s going to make it back in time. It’s probably already been longer than twenty minutes, Blacker will have already left.

There’s nobody in the office – LB must be out – but the door’s been left unlocked, so she figures it’s as good a resting point as anywhere else. She drops the pile of paperwork that’s meant to go to Computing on top of LB’s desk, and sinks down to the carpeted floor, sighing. She flicks aimlessly at the Escape Watch, fiddling around with it until she finds the radio function.

“What’s the news?” says a vaguely unfamiliar, but still pretty cheerful, voice. It gives Ruby pause for a second or two, before she realizes that Buzz is no longer managing all Spectrum calls, and there hasn’t been anybody officially appointed for the job since.

“It’s Ruby, Agent Redfort,” she says. “I – sorry, who is this? Are you the new phone manager or whatever?”

“I’m Bob,” says – apparently – Bob. “I’m freelancing. This whole phone thing is _super_ complicated, though, so I’m probably not going to stick around here for long.”

“Cool, cool,” Ruby says. “Look, could you patch me through to Agent Blacker? I’ve got a minor sort of directional problem here. It’s pretty urgent.”

“Agent Blacker?” There’s the sound of something clattering vaguely in the distance, and a phone or two ringing. “Coming right up! Hopefully…!”

It’s another ten seconds before she’s actually put through, and when he does pick up, Blacker doesn’t waste any time. “You’re in the gadget room, aren’t you?”

“I am _not,_ and frankly I’m offended that you’d suggest such a thing.”

“And yet,” says Blacker, and it sounds like he’s smiling, “I somehow sense that you are not anywhere Computing at this very moment, which is, y’know, where you said you’d be heading to.”

“I got lost,” says Ruby, wincing.

“You got lost,” says Blacker neutrally. “And…”

“And I tried to ask for directions, ended up averting a small explosion-related crisis that may or may not have been partly my fault, received a nickname, took the advice of somebody who had no idea what they were talking about, and… well. Long story short, I’m in LB’s office now, and I’m borderline afraid to leave.”

Blacker snorts. It’s almost like he can’t help it. “Sounds like you’ve had an eventful afternoon.”

“Please help me,” says Ruby, hoping she doesn’t sound as pathetic as she feels.

“Hang tight for a bit, Ruby,” he tells her, and the smile is definitely there. “I’ll be right there, hopefully before LB is. Don’t touch anything.”

Her watch clicks once, and he’s gone.

Ruby sighs, and briefly entertains the thought of doing as Blacker says and not touching anything. The key word, of course, being ‘briefly’. She’s on her feet in less than a second, and curiously going through the few documents and files that have been left on the desk of her boss.

There’s a couple of heavily redacted letters from some sort of British organization called UNIT that she skims over because, a) see above, heavily redacted, and b) they don’t really seem interesting anyway; mostly logistics stuff about shifting equipment. Next to the UNIT letters are inter-departmental transfer documents for somebody named ‘Dorothy McShane’, and Ruby recognizes the girl in the picture as Ace from back in the chemistry lab. She idly reads through her background (born somewhere called Perivale, typical rebellious teenager school life), and frowns briefly at her birth date, which is stated to be the ‘20th of August, 1970’. _Must be a typo._

Apart from some tantalizingly vague skirting-around of Ace’s post-Perivale life, and a surprising lack of any actual qualifications whatsoever, there’s really nothing to note there either. Ruby decides to maybe go snooping further on that front later, and moves on to the largest file on the desk, which is marked as simply ‘the Doctor’ and stamped with a bright red CLASSIFIED mark. Twice. That’s practically an invitation.

Ruby grins, and flips it open. There’s a photo of a man there, giving the camera a look as if he’s been startled rather suddenly by the photographer’s appearance. He’s wearing a brown suit jacket and some sort of weird sweater-vest that’s covered in tiny question marks, and there’s a round straw hat covering his rather wild-looking dark hair.

 _The man known only as the Doctor,_ she begins to read, and that’s as far as she gets, because at that very moment, Blacker walks in.

“Do I want to know what you were doing?” he asks, watching Ruby slam the file closed and scramble away from LB’s desk rather guiltily.

“Ask no questions, hear no lies,” she says, scooping up the Computing files. “Let’s get out of here, huh?”


	2. Chapter Two

Ruby ducks into the Double Donut the next morning for a prearranged meet-up with Clancy, hair dripping with rain and plastering to her skin. She wipes condensation from her glasses, tries to wring out her sodden shirt, and glances around. The diner is nearly empty, but Marla’s behind the counter, making up a tray of tea, and she waves cheerfully in Ruby’s direction.

Ruby goes up to the counter and orders a banana milkshake. There is music playing on the old radio in the corner, a cheerful song with guitar sung by a rather baffled sounding singer.

Ruby takes a seat near the window, and watches the rain coat the glass in patterns while she waits for her friend and her drink to arrive, in no particular order.

“Excuse me,” says somebody behind her, “but would you mind terribly if I joined you? My friend hasn’t arrived yet, and I do hate to sit alone.”

Ruby turns to look at the man, and her eyebrows shoot up – even though she’s never met him before in her life, she recognizes him. The question-mark jumper, the brown coat, the white straw hat perched on his head – and his eyes are old and deep and wise and at this very moment, he’s smiling at her.

“Sure,” she says, trying to swallow her surprise. “It’s a free country, man, and my friend’s not here yet either.”

“Thank you.” He seats himself almost elegantly on the chair opposite hers, and regards the rain silently but cheerfully. “An excellent day for contemplation, no?”

“You’re the Doctor,” says Ruby, almost making it into a question, but ultimately deciding not to.

He turns his head sideways, and gives her a curious look. “It seems my reputation precedes me,” he says. “In my experience, that means you’re either very alien or very nosy. Which is it, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Nosy,” says Ruby unapologetically.

“I thought so,” he says, apparently unconcerned by this. “You don’t have nearly enough tentacles for the former.” He raises his hat slightly and tips it in her direction. “A pleasure to meet you, my nosy friend. I’m the Doctor – or, wait, no; you know that already.”

“I’m Ruby,” she says, and mimes a hat-tip of her own, despite the fact that she doesn’t have one on. “Ruby Redfort.”

“ _Rrrrrr_ uby,” the Doctor says thoughtfully, spinning out the ‘r’ like he’s spinning a top. “Well, then. That rather changes things, doesn’t it?”

“It does?” That statement makes Ruby ever so slightly nervous. The Doctor doesn’t seem like he’s dangerous, but appearances could be and frequently were very deceiving indeed.

“It explains how you know who I am, for one thing,” he says. “Spectrum, correct?”

“Oh – ” Ruby relaxes. “ – yeah. That’s right. Not so loud,” she adds, not because there’s any real danger of anybody overhearing, but more out of habit, and then she leans across the table towards him. “Why were you in LB’s files? And why were they marked _1907?_ Does she know you? Did she call you here or something?”

“She did,” the Doctor says, answering the last question first, which is – well, all right, it’s a bit infuriating, but she can work with that. “Apparently there’s been a resurgence of possible alien activity in Twinford, and both she and the UN agreed, presumably, that I was the best person for the job of cleaning it up.”

Ruby frowns. “You work for the United Nations?”

“Hardly,” he says, smiling. “In fact, I’d go so far as to say that they, more often than not, work for _me._ But that’s beside the point.”

“What is the point, then?” Ruby asks, and then pretty much answers her own question when she registers the other part of what the Doctor’s just said. “ _Alien activity?_ You do know that’s ridiculous, right?”

“Ah,” says the Doctor, a touch sadly. “I see. A skeptic.”

“Aliens don’t exist,” says Ruby.

“What makes you say that?” The Doctor is smiling, though, in a way that’s very patronizing even though he probably doesn’t mean it to be.

“There’s no proof,” she says.

Their drinks arrive – a banana milkshake for Ruby, of course, and a full pot of Earl Grey tea for the Doctor. There seems to be a silently agreed-upon truce, because both of them put their argument on hold for a moment. The Doctor pours himself a cup, and blows gently on it. Ruby slurps at her milkshake with more force than is strictly necessary. The rain is still pouring down outside.

“I suppose you don’t believe in time travel, either,” says the Doctor, stirring sugar into his tea.

There’s something in his tone that gives Ruby pause. “You got any proof of it?”

The Doctor makes a humming noise, and then shrugs in what appears to be a calculatedly dismissive way. “Let’s say, for a second, that time travel _does_ exist, but you just didn’t have evidence of it yet. What sort of proof would you require for you to be utterly and completely convinced?”

Ruby thinks this over for a moment; really gives the question her full attention. “I guess…” she says eventually. “…I guess I’d need some sort of hard evidence that relates to me, personally. Something that couldn’t be faked. Like, I’d need to meet myself, my future or past self in person, and she’d have to tell me something that only I could ever know.”

“And failing that?” the Doctor asks. “Meeting yourself tends to be rather dangerous, you know.”

“Failing that, I’d need either a trip into the past or future that absolutely _couldn’t_ be faked or… or…” she struggles for a moment, and then shrugs. “Written proof? I don’t know.”

“Hm,” says the Doctor, and tugs a napkin from the dispenser in the centre of the table. He produces a pen from behind her ear, and momentarily grins at her with wide eyes, as if expecting applause for the execution of the simple magic trick.

“I’ve seen that one before,” says Ruby, unimpressed, and pulls a nickel out from behind her own ear. She holds it out for inspection and after he’s nodded at the coin, closes her hand into a tight fist. She makes a theatrical gesture, then raps her knuckles firmly on the table. When she opens it again, the nickel is gone. Of course it is. “It’s just sleight of hand. Kid’s stuff.”

“Is it?” the Doctor asks, quirking an eyebrow. He taps a finger to her other hand, the one that they both know she switched the coin to during her dramatic motion. “You seem very jaded for your age, Miss Redfort. Is it so much of a stretch to think that there could be greater things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy?”

Ruby thinks for a second, but not about widening her horizons. “Macbeth?” she asks, unsure.

“Close, but no – Hamlet. Now…” He makes a grand gesture of his own, waving his conjured pen over his left hand, as if twirling a wand. “Hey presto!” he declares, and splays his fingers out. In the centre of his palm is a shiny silver nickel. He drops it to the table, nudging it towards her. “This is yours, I believe?”

Ruby smiles, despite herself. “Nice try, bozo, but I’ve still got my…” She trails off, and frowns at her own closed hand. Slowly, she uncurls her fingers. There’s nothing there. “Wait. How did you-?”

“Magic,” says the Doctor, entirely too smugly, and his eyes are twinkling with delight. He slides the napkin across the table, placing the pen on top of it. “Now. You said you wanted proof?”

Ruby snatches the coin, stowing it in her pocket, and then takes the pen and napkin rather cautiously, as if they’re likely to explode at any moment. “What do I do with this?”

“Whatever you want,” says the Doctor solemnly. “Write anything. Or draw anything. It doesn’t especially matter.”

Ruby stares at him suspiciously and starts to say something, but then stops herself. She decides to humour him for the moment, and, after blanking momentarily on what to do, doodles a tiny fly in the centre of the napkin. “How’s this?”

“I don’t know,” says the Doctor. He hasn’t been looking at what she’s doing, instead fishing around in an inside pocket of his jacket for something within. He tugs out what looks like another napkin, albeit slightly more crumpled than the one Ruby’s holding. “You tell me.”

“Another magic trick?” Ruby’s already reaching for the napkin, curiosity overtaking scepticism for the moment.

“Of a sort.” The Doctor tugs it back and opens it up, holding it out to Ruby – whose mouth falls open. In the centre, doodled in slightly fading black ink, is a tiny, perfect fly.

“That’s – ” she begins, and then stops. “You knew I’d do that,” she says accusingly. “You mentioned Spectrum, and then you suggested that I draw something instead of writing. It’s just another trick, like the coin.” Even though she has no idea how he had made it vanish from her hand, there has to be some kind of logical explanation. There _has_ to. Right?

“Ah, but these flies look exactly alike, do they not?”

She folds her arms. “It’s a fly. Pretty much all flies look alike.” She takes up the pen again, and flips her own napkin over, exposing the new, blank side. “All right then, if you’re going to be like that – ”

And she scrawls out, as quickly as she can – changing her handwriting markedly from how she usually would write – the first words that come to her mind – _there is no conceivable way that you could know what I’m writing right now because I literally don’t know myself. Spectrum. Banana milk. Clancy Crew. Bradley Baker._ “There,” she says, slamming the pen down. “Magic _that._ ”

The Doctor raises an eyebrow, and folds the duplicate napkin delicately in half before flipping it to the other side as well. He spreads it out across the table with a flourish – a magician presenting his grand finale.

 _There is no conceivable way,_ Ruby begins to read, and then she looks up, scowling. It’s a perfect duplicate. Of course it is. “It’s some sort of advanced carbon copy,” she guesses. “Whatever you write on one appears on the other.”

“Plausible,” the Doctor allows, with a sigh and another sip of his tea. “But more than a little convoluted. _Or,_ we could apply Occam’s Razor to this situation, and go with the most simple solution – I really am a time traveller, Miss Redfort, and this – ” he taps the napkin, “ – is the future version of the item you are currently holding in your hands.”

Frustrated, Ruby picks up her napkin, and tears it roughly in two. She slams the two halves back onto the table, making the cutlery rattle. She tilts her head at him, a silent challenge.

The Doctor doesn’t even flinch. He just shifts his hands slightly. The two halves of the napkin in his own hands come apart from where he had been holding them carefully together. With an oddly apologetic shrug, he holds up the halves to the version of the napkin that Ruby’s just ripped apart. She’s somehow not surprised in the least to see that they match, perfectly.

She just stares at him dully. “You knew I’d do that, didn’t you.”

“It was a distinct possibility,” he admits.

Ruby thinks very, _very_ hard, but can’t find any other way for him to have accomplished the entire stunt that isn’t ridiculously contrived. And when you’ve eliminated the impossible…

“All right,” she says, “so you _are_ a time traveller. And…” She frowns, and twirls her straw around the bottom of her milkshake glass. “…wait, were you here specifically looking for me? You had to have got that future version of the napkin from somewhere, so…”

“I haven’t been entirely upfront with you, Miss Redfort,” the Doctor admits. “We’ve met before – or rather, you will shortly meet a past version of me, to which you will give this.” He gestures vaguely in the direction of the torn napkin that she’s holding. “Be careful with that, incidentally – grandfather paradoxes are nasty little things.”

Ruby accepts this with a thoughtful nod. “Why, though?”

“Why am I meeting you in the first place, do you mean?” He raises his eyebrows. “Well, quite aside from the main problem at hand, I suppose it’s a bit of a predestination paradox in and of itself – and those are equally nasty as other sorts of paradoxes, albeit much more difficult to slip your way out of.”

Ruby ignores the philosophical ramble, which she’s become quite adept at doing over the few minutes of their acquaintance. “The main problem at hand? You mentioned aliens. Does it have something to do with that?”

He smiles at her, and it’s an odd sort smile, like he’s proud of her. She should probably feel like he’s being condescending, but, strangely, it comes off as almost the opposite. “You’re quite the bright young girl, aren’t you? Yes, it very much does have to do with a possible alien incursion.”

Ruby tries to imagine aliens of any sort in Twinford. It’s very hard to do, like trying to picture a new color. “What _are_ you, even – some kinda space-time policeman?”

He laughs. “Occasionally.”

“Right.” She senses she’s not going to get an answer about that, and moves on. “And – these aliens. What do they want?”

“World domination, usually,” says the Doctor. “My enemies are so rarely original, to my eternal dismay.”

“Those words should never be spoken that calmly,” Ruby mutters. “Also, typical.”

“Don’t worry. If the timelines hold, I’m more than moderately certain that you and the rest of us will succeed in defeating the Daleks without any casualties. Well,” he adds, “any _new_ casualties.”

“Awesome,” says Ruby. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Also, what are Daleks?”

“Ah, yes, that’s the other thing,” the Doctor says, nodding, “when you inevitably meet my past self, I need you to tell him that the Daleks are involved. It’s imperative, otherwise he – I – won’t have a clue what we’re up against.”

Ruby weighs a spoon in her hands. She glances out across the street again. The rain is getting worse. “I feel like you’ve been planning whatever this whole – this whole _thing_ is for a while. You seem to know exactly what you’re doing.”

The Doctor’s smile fades, and he looks very old for a moment. “Do I?”

“I think so,” says Ruby, not missing how the mood has suddenly shifted. The air seems somehow heavier. “Do you _need_ to do this? All this fiddling around with time travel, I mean? Can’t it sort itself out?”

“Time,” the Doctor says, “is like this cup of tea.”

“Uh,” says Ruby after a second of silence passes. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, I’m rather enjoying it at the moment,” he says and takes a sip. “And if somebody came up to me right here and now and tried to meddle with it, or heaven forbid, take it _away_ from me,” and here he raises his eyebrows, “why, then I imagine I’d be very unhappy at them indeed.”

“So it’s good tea, then?” Ruby asks. The air is no longer heavy, but she feels like he’s trying to communicate a very complicated concept to her with a rather thoroughly mixed metaphor. She’s not so sure she understands.

The Doctor stares deep into his cup, and then suddenly pulls a face. “No,” he admits. “It’s terrible. American tea tends to be. But the fact remains that it’s _my_ tea, mine alone, and I now feel rather compelled to finish my cup before anybody else does it for me.” He raises it in the air, as if in salute, and indicates the still-steaming teapot. “Would you like some?”

“Not really,” says Ruby.

“Fair enough.” He drinks the rest of his tea in silence, and Ruby takes the napkin from the table, folding the halves over each other and then over again before tucking them into her pocket, next to her coin, before she returns to her milkshake. They sit in introspective silence for a while.

Minutes later, the doors to the Double Donut jingle open, and instinctively Ruby glances up to see who it is. She grins at the sight of Clancy Crew, and waves to him. “Hey, you!”

“Oh man,” he says, coming over to join her. He slips into the seat next to hers, and brushes a hand through his hair – droplets of water scatter everywhere. “Sorry I’m late, Rube, there was – wait. Who’s this guy?”

Before Ruby can respond, the door opens again, and the next person to enter is also familiar.

“What’s Hitch doing here?” Clancy asks, more to himself than Ruby. Hitch closes his umbrella, and glances around the diner once. His eyes fall upon the table that the three of them are sitting at, and he looks _immensely_ confused all of a sudden – his mouth even begins to open like he’s about to ask a question –

The door opens again, and two more people enter.

“Hey, it’s Carrots!” exclaims the girl that Ruby recognizes as Ace, from the chemistry lab. “Hey, Ruby! Professor, that’s the girl I told you about – ”

“Hey, Ace!” Ruby says reflexively, and then registers who Ace has just entered with and is currently talking to. She spins to the Doctor. “Wait, but that’s – ”

“Hang on,” says Hitch, hand going to the pocket where Ruby knows his gun is stored. “Why are there two of him?”

“Whoops,” says the Doctor that’s sitting across from Ruby, and springs to his feet with a rather guilty expression on his face. “I do believe I’m dangerously close to crossing my own timeline – would you look at that?”

“Now, that’s just irresponsible,” says the Doctor who is standing next to Ace. He is identical to the one sitting down in nearly all respects, apart from one slight difference – he’s holding a black umbrella, the handle of which is moulded into the shape of a cartoonish red question mark.

“What’s going-?” Clancy starts to say, looking rather panicked at how quickly everything has gotten complicated.

“Time travel,” both Doctors and Ace chorus in near-unison. None of them sound very happy about it. Ace sounds almost resigned.

Hitch sits down heavily on the nearest seat. “LB didn’t mention this in the report,” he says.

Ruby looks across just in time to see the Doctor disappearing through the diner doors. And then she turns back to the rest of the group. “All right,” she says. “So, long story short: aliens exist, maybe; time travel exists, definitely; and I think I just got roped into helping said aliens from destroying this town and the rest of the planet – probably. Is that right?” she asks the Doctor that’s still in the diner.

Infuriatingly, he shrugs. “You know, I really have no idea,” he confesses, and smiles, the expression curving slyly across his face. “But I suppose if my future self said it, it must be true.”

“Sorry, what _exactly_ are you talking about?” Hitch asks.

Ruby shrugs. “I actually have no idea and believe me, it’s a lot less fun than it looks.” She addresses the Doctor again. “I don’t know what this means, but your – the other guy. He said to tell you that – what was it? – the Daleks were involved?”

The reaction to this is immediate. Ace blanches, one hand going up to grip the strap of her rucksack, and mutters something indistinct under her breath. The Doctor winces, and looks more than a little grim.

“Well,” he says. “This certainly complicates matters.”

“Great,” says Ace. “Just what I need in my life. More complications.”

“Ruby, this is even more insane than it usually is,” Clancy whispers out of the corner of his mouth, looking frantic. “ _What’s going on._ ”

“I think,” says Hitch, “that we need to go talk to LB.”


	3. Chapter Three

****They go to talk to LB. All of them.

“I told you to sort out the local alien incursion,” she says, staring the Doctor dead in the eyes. She looks very, very tired. “Not assemble a small army.”

“This hardly counts as an army,” says the Doctor dismissively. “Although, considering who we’re likely to be going up against, I feel like a small army might be necessary.”

“I can probably break a grown man’s arm in less than thirty seconds,” Ruby volunteers.

“I definitely don’t have a bag full of high explosives,” says Ace, “because the Doctor told me not to bring them. But if I _did_ happen to have them, which I totally don’t, stop looking at me like that, Professor; I’d be just as dangerous as Carrots over there is.”

Hitch just shrugs. “I have a gun. But you knew that already.”

LB glances over at Clancy, who looks rather uncomfortable with the attention she’s giving him. “I… keep Ruby from doing stupid things occasionally? And I can juggle,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. “I don’t know if that helps, though.”

“Good enough,” she sighs. Her sharp gaze returns to the Doctor. “What are we doing here, Doctor? You said that all you’d need was a week or less, and you’d sort out whatever alien device it was that brought Valerie Capaldi back to life. You said you and your assistant would keep out of our way.”

“Things have gotten markedly more complicated since then,” says the Doctor. He’s leaning on his umbrella like it’s a cane. He frowns. “And I rather thought we _were_ keeping out of your way.”

“Miss McShane blew up Lab 21 yesterday evening,” LB says dryly. “It was a very impressive explosion, or so I’m told.”

Ace winces at this, looking more than a little guilty. The Doctor makes a disapproving noise, and frowns at her, but doesn’t say anything.

“So Nine-Lives _is_ back,” Ruby says, almost wonderingly. “I wasn’t just imagining her…”

“We were told you had an issue with a shapeshifter,” says the Doctor.

“Except we aren’t so sure that’s the case anymore!” Ace says, taking over the explanation with vivid enthusiasm. “Just because she was dead and now she’s not doesn’t mean anything – there’s a whole load of aliens and non-aliens that could have done something to her body!”

“And now we know the Daleks are involved,” says the Doctor, and trails off ominously.

Clancy raises a hand into the air tentatively. “Sorry, I might be missing something here, but. What exactly _are_ the Daleks?”

“Nasty, warmongering genocidal excuses for pepperpots,” the Doctor says disdainfully, and draws in a deep, shuddering breath. “Imagine a race of beings that were created on the principle of a vast mistake, and in their creation, became so committed to the mistake that they decided to destroy worlds and planets and galaxies because of it! Those are the Daleks – repugnant no matter how matter you look at them.”

“Not good, then,” Clancy says after a beat.

“Yeah, that’s putting it lightly,” says Ace.

“So they’re evil,” LB says. “That’s all well and good, but how does this relate to our recently resurrected friend?”

“Duplicates,” the Doctor and Ace say together, and then exchange a glance.

“Last time we met them, the Daleks had found a way to copy people,” Ace explains. “Perfectly. Bodies, memories, everything – but, you know, _evil._ And likely to snap somebody’s neck, just for fun,” she adds, looking disgusted. The Doctor pats her arm distractedly.

“Why would they want to duplicate Capaldi?” LB asks.

“Any number of reasons,” the Doctor says. “Ranging from that of convenience – perhaps her DNA was just the first that they happened to pick up – to a multitude of others that are far more sinister. Knowledge that she might have retained, for example, or maybe she was created specifically to hunt down… something. Or somebody.”

Ruby really doesn’t like the sound of that. “I really don’t like the sound of that,” she says.

“The strange thing is, we haven’t actually seen any Daleks around,” Ace says. “There’s been chatter in the Twinford radiowaves, the usual Dalek encrypted stuff that we can’t really _hear,_ but no sign of them. Not a single toilet plunger.” She sighs. “It’s well uncanny, it is.”

LB looks unruffled, as usual. She interlaces her fingers together in front of her. “So where do you propose we go from here? This isn’t exactly our area of expertise, as you very well know.”

“We need to find Ms Capaldi,” the Doctor says. “One way or another. As soon as we track her down, we will have the opportunity to figure out what’s really going on. The problem, I fear, lies in the tracking-down itself – she appears to have gone off the grid, so to speak. I must admit, I’m rather stumped on how to proceed.”

“Really?” Ruby asks, tilting her head to one side. “I think it’s pretty obvious.”

“It is?” Hitch asks, just as LB says, “is it, now?”, Ace says “sure you do,” Clancy goes “huh?” and the Doctor just smiles at her silently with an invitation written all over his face, like she’s passed some sort of secret test that she had no idea she was taking.

“Well, yeah,” she says after a moment. “You proved it – well, will prove, I guess? – before, back in the café. Time travel is real. I’m _guessing_ that means you’ve got some sorta time machine, which means that we can go back in time to where we last saw Nine-Lives – and we can intercept her there, and do… whatever.”

“Oh, ace!” Ace exclaims. “That almost makes sense!”

LB appears to bury herself in paperwork. She is studiously avoiding eye contact with everybody in the room. “You seem to have this all under control. I’ll leave you to it.”

“But – ” Hitch begins.

“Go with them, Hitch,” she says. “You too, Redfort. Crew – you can do what you want; you don’t work for me.” A pause. “What are you waiting for? _Deal with this._ ”

“Excellent!” says the Doctor, like he hasn’t just been ordered around by the scariest woman on Earth. “To the TARDIS, then!”

Clancy frowns. “Wait,” he says. “What’s a TARDIS?”

* * *

It’s bigger on the inside.

“I refuse to state the obvious,” says Hitch flatly.

“Good,” says the Doctor, tossing his hat neatly across to Ace, who catches it with an eye-roll and stows it in the hatstand. “Being predictable is terribly tedious, I’ve found.”

“That’s fair.” Ruby eyes the console with some interest, and then looks back out to the doors. “I’m _super_ curious, though; how does it work?”

The Doctor actually flinches slightly, and clears his throat. “It’s… well. It’s simultaneously a lot more and a considerable amount less complicated then it looks. Ace, you explain it,” he throws over his shoulder, spinning around to busy himself with the complicated-looking controls of his time machine.

“Do I have to?” Ace almost whines.

“Consider it an extra-credit assignment,” he says.

“Fine,” she says, sighing. She turns to the three visitors. “Right, so. Let’s say you have two balls, yeah? One really small and one normal size. You take the bigger ball and hold it out, and then you take the smaller ball and you hold it out even further, and if you do it just right, it’ll look like the balls are the same size – even though they’re actually completely different sizes.”

Ruby and Clancy exchange a brief glance and then nod.

“What his lot did,” and she makes a vague gesture in the Doctor’s direction, at which he obligingly waves, “was figure out a way to fit the big ball _inside_ the small ball, all the while keeping them so that they _look_ the same size from the outside, but really aren’t. Easy! If you’re a Time Lord, anyway. How’d I do, Professor?”

“Admirably,” he calls from the other side of the console room with a smile in his voice. “An excellent explanation, fully deserving of several gold stars… if I could remember where I keep them…”

She beams and shoots him a double thumbs-up. “I’ll find some later.”

“Oh,” says Clancy, almost wonderingly. “I think I get it?”

“A working tesseract,” Ruby says, impressed.

“More or less,” says the Doctor, and pulls a lever down, hard. “Although true tesseracts are utterly cuboid in every way, and my TARDIS, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, has more than a little variation from that description.”

“Also,” adds Ace, although her tone of voice makes it seem like it’s an obvious detail that’s unnecessary to add, “it travels through time and space, near-instantly. Anywhere and everywhere, in the blink of an eye.” She grins. “It’s wicked fun. We go on all sorts of adventures.”

Clancy looks awed. “Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever been?” he asks.

Ace considers this for a second or two. “There was a planet where being sad was illegal,” she says, “and everybody had candyfloss hair – and there was this bloke made of candy – although that probably wasn’t the _weirdest…_ ”

The TARDIS begins to grind and grumble, and the lava-lamp-esque construction that is the central column rises up and down rhythmically. And after only a few seconds of this, they land with a bump.

“We’re here,” he says.

“Excellent,” says Hitch, and then, “wait, where is ‘here’?”

“Not ‘where’, Mister Hitch – rather, the word you are no doubt looking for is ‘when’! And exactly twenty-four hours ago, if I programmed the TARDIS correctly.” The Doctor strides over to the door, scooping up his hat on the way. He taps his umbrella against the floor. “Come along, then!” he invites. “We have a dead woman to t _rrr_ ack down, and not much time to spare!”

It’s raining outside, and immediately upon exiting, every winces and pulls up their collars. They’re on what Ruby recognizes as the road right outside her school, and by the looks of it, it’s early afternoon.

“So we really did move in time and space,” says Ruby, glancing at the incongruous blue box that they’ve just exited. “Huh.”

“Yes, yes, I thought we had established that already,” the Doctor says, a touch impatiently, glancing back and forth. “We really should find some sort of shelter – we’ll catch our _deaths_ out here – ”

“Professor,” says Ace.

“Hmm – yes, Ace, what is it?” The Doctor’s squinting, as if to see a clear path through the rain.

“Umbrella,” she says in a long-suffering manner.

“I don’t…” He stops and grins sheepishly, raising said umbrella to the sky. “Of course – quite right.” He pops it open, twirling it once, and Ace steps up to join him, hiking up the strap of her rucksack as she does.

Hitch, Clancy and Ruby exchange glances, and then Ruby shrugs, and they join the Doctor and Ace under the umbrella’s shelter. Ruby had been expecting a tight squeeze to get everybody out of the rain, but there turns out to be more-or-less just enough room. It’s almost as if the Doctor’s umbrella is as dimensionally transcendental as his box is – although, how would that even work?

“What’s the plan?” Hitch asks. “I’m assuming we have a plan, by the way, because I really don’t want to know what we’re doing here if we don’t.”

The Doctor passes the umbrella-holding duties off to Ace, who mumbles a brief complaint about being reduced to his assistant, and goes hunting through his seemingly-endless pockets once more. He produces an old-fashioned watch hanging off a chain, and checks it briefly. Ruby cranes her neck to look, but it’s not like any watch she’s ever seen. There seem to be an infinite number of hands, and markings written in a strange circular script all over the place. The Doctor seems to understand it, though, because he clicks it shut, and stows it away.

“The time is twelve-fourteen, yesterday afternoon,” he announces to everybody else.

Ruby runs a quick, tiny calculation in her head. “I saw Nine-Lives around twelve-thirty, I think?”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Hitch asks, at just the same time as Clancy says, “wait, _that’s_ why you were acting so weird yesterday?”

“Where was it that she appeared, Miss Redfort?” the Doctor asks, ignoring both of them.

Ruby points. “Other side of the school. Near the fence – ”

The Doctor just about snatches his umbrella back from Ace and starts speedwalking in the indicated direction. There is a chorus of complaints as everybody else gets showered with the heavy rain.

“Professor!” Ace protests.

“Hurry up!” comes the reply from halfway down the street.

They hurry up, catching up with him just as he’s reaching the opposite site of the school, and everybody huddles under the relative safety of the brolly once more, grumbling vaguely. Once more, the Doctor abandons his grip on the handle to Ace, and goes off searching for something.

“Is he always like this?” Clancy wonders as they watch him running a finger along the chain-links of the fence, examining nothing that they can see.

“What, the infuriating old professor thing?” Ace considers this for a moment, blinking rain from her eyes. “Well, mostly, yeah. When he’s not being serious, or terrifying, or oddly sweet. Or all three at once.”

“So what is he?” Ruby asks. “Your uncle, or your teacher, or…?”

“He’s the Doctor,” says Ace. The side of her mouth quirks up slightly. “And… well. I guess – he’s my best friend.”

“Did I feel my ears burning?” asks the Doctor, wandering back into the conversation.

Ace smiles. “Just telling them how impossible you are, even at the best of times.”

“I shall take that as a compliment,” he says with considerable dignity. “Like Alice, I very much believe in accomplishing as many impossible things as it is possible to fit into that narrow, narrow space before breakfast. Life just isn’t worth living otherwise, don’t you think?”

“I think,” says Ace, “that I’ve just realized I live with an aging hippy.”

The sharp click of a gun’s safety catch flicking off catches them all by surprise, and cuts an end to the light-hearted conversation. Ruby turns to see Hitch aiming at somebody standing just beyond the fence, facing away from them, and begins to ask a question, but then sees who he’s aiming at, and freezes too.

“There is really no need for that,” murmurs the Doctor, but doesn’t move to stop Hitch. “That’s her, I presume?”

“That’s Nine-Lives Capaldi,” Hitch confirms, not blinking. “Who’s now reached her tenth life, apparently.”


	4. Chapter Four

Capaldi isn’t moving. She appears to be talking to somebody that isn’t there, and hasn’t even noticed their presence. Ruby instinctively glances to the fence; to the crowds of milling children, idling in the rain, and nudges Clancy when she finds who she’s looking for. “Look. It’s us.”

“It’s-?” Clancy looks, and sees the two of them, sitting under a tree and talking. He shivers noticeably. “Oh, that is _weird_.”

“Is it?” Ruby pushes her glasses up a bit further and squints, so as to see herself better. “Huh. I’m looking _good_ yesterday.”

“Can we please focus?” Hitch requests tetchily.

The Doctor nods. “That would be advisable. Miss R _rrrr_ edfort, has your past self spotted Ms Capaldi through the fence yet?”

“Not y – oh,” says Ruby, as she witnesses the same scene she experienced nearly a day ago from a third-person point of view. “Clance, you’re right, that _is_ weird. Yep,” she adds to the Doctor. “Just happened.”

“Right then.” Ace stands up, and begins to make her way in the direction of Capaldi.

“Ace?” says the Doctor.

“Don’t worry, Professor, I got this. Don’t shoot me, Butler Boy, the Professor’ll get well mad,” she tells Hitch, and then she’s moving at a brisk jog.

“It’s true,” says the Doctor with a tone that’s far, far too mild. He looks worried, but he doesn’t move to stop her. “Although ‘mad’ might be putting it lightly. ‘Apoplectic’ springs to mind. Kindly lower that gun,” he adds to Hitch, who, to his credit, does so almost instantly.

They watch as Ace approaches Valerie Capaldi, who’s already begun to walk away. Ruby catches a glimpse of something in the older woman’s hand – something shiny and orb-shaped.

“Control orb,” says the Doctor, practically in her ear. She jumps, startled, and then glares.

“Jeez, man, don’t sneak up on me like that – ”

“Shh. Watch.”

She squashes the urge to pull a face at him, and does. Watch, that is, not be quiet. “Control orb. What control orb? What does it control?”

Ace yells something indistinct that’s swallowed up by the rain. Nine-Lives, or whatever’s wearing her body, seems to register it, and turns halfway. And then they’re talking – again, too indistinct to hear.

“It sends a signal, if she can get it to the predefined location they set her down at,” the Doctor says.

“And the signal… does what?” Clancy asks, voice low. Ace, facing off against Capaldi, is the very picture of confidence. Arms folded, legs shoulder-width apart, not taking any sort of nonsense. But there’s a certain smile on the other woman’s lips that really doesn’t bode well at all.

“It starts the invasion,” says the Doctor grimly. And Nine-Lives’ arms shoots out – extended directly towards Ace.

There is what looks like a crack of very intense, very contained lightning that seems to jump from Nine-Lives’ hand to Ace’s, and Ace lets out a cry of shock and pain, and then Ruby’s vision goes white from the intensity of the glare – and judging by the sharp intakes of breath from all around her, everyone else’s does too.

When it clears, she sees Ace lying motionless on the street, getting soaked by the rain. Nine-Lives – or whatever she’s become – is nowhere to be seen.

The Doctor is already moving, and Ruby and the others quickly follow.

“Where is she?” Hitch demands, practically screeching to a stop besides Ace, who’s struggling to her feet and attempting to catch her breath. She appears unharmed, if more than a little annoyed.

Ace swears loudly. The Doctor, who’s positioned himself behind her, hisses out a quick, “language!” before helping her carefully to her feet.

“I’m fine, Professor, get off… she just hit me with some sorta – stun ray?” Ace pants, and she points down the street. “That way. That big building – ”

“Oh god, that’s the library,” Clancy says. “She’s going to the library.”

Hitch takes off at a sprint. Ruby could swear that she hears the _zoom_ sound effect and sees the cartoonish puff of smoke. The Doctor brushes off some gravel from Ace’s shoulder, and he looks very grave indeed. “How many people usually are at the library at this time of day?”

“Not a _lot,_ but,” Ruby swallows. “There’s gonna be a bunch there.”

“And she just took the Dalek signal thing right to them,” Clancy says. “That’s where they’re going to land?”

“Yeah. Not good,” says Ace, apparently fully recovered, and tugs her rucksack zipper open fully. She reaches in, and – improbably – pulls out a full-sized baseball bat, duct tape plastered around the handle, and slings it over her shoulder.

Clancy stares. “How did you-?”

“Bigger on the inside,” Ace says, and then catches the ambiguously disapproving look the Doctor’s shooting her. “Oh, _come on,_ Professor, you do the same thing – I caught you sewing black holes into your pockets just last week!” She pulls out some more items from her bag, smaller this time, and casts an appraising glance at Ruby. “How’s your aim, Carrots?”

“I can hit a bulls-eye by spitting watermelon seeds at it from up to ten metres,” says Ruby.

“Nice,” says Ace appreciatively, and tosses her a slingshot and a bag of round black stones. “Aim for the eyepiece! And you,” she throws an old-looking can of spray paint at Clancy. He catches it, looking bemused. “Ditto. If you can impair their vision, it’ll make our job a whole lot easier.”

“Got it,” Ruby says, twanging the slingshot’s band a few times, experimentally. “…eyepiece?”

“You’ll know when you see them.” Ace is zipping up her rucksack. “They’re kind of… alien.”

“When you’ve all quite finished with your impromptu weapons exchange,” the Doctor snaps impatiently.

Ace snaps off a cheeky salute in his direction, but she looks entirely serious as she nods. “Let’s go.”

* * *

 

The Doctor leads the charge into the library. It’s not hard to guess where Hitch has tracked the thing that used to be Nine-Lives Capaldi to – there are groups of people cowering in groups, staring in the direction of the Non-Fiction section; the exact sort of cowering that ensues when somebody with a gun has just entered the premises. The cowering only intensifies when the assorted librarians and patrons of the library realize that Ace, who is following close behind the Doctor, is holding a rather heavy and impressively-dented baseball bat.

“What are we even _doing_ here?” Clancy mutters to Ruby in something like panic as they follow the two time-travellers through the rows of books. He’s holding his spray-can tightly in both hands, like it’s his sole grounding point in a world that’s suddenly become far, _far_ too confusing. “Shouldn’t we be in school right now? Isn’t that what kids our age are meant to be doing?”

“Clance, we _are_ in school right now, technically,” Ruby says, loading a shiny black stone into her newly-acquired slingshot and hoping that it’ll do as much damage as Ace seems to think it will. “Time travel, remember?”

“Yeah, I know – this is just all so _weird –_ ”

Ace, in front of them, makes a faint _shush_ noise and motions for them to stop. Cautiously, Ruby and Clancy join her, peering around the shelves. Hitch is backed up against a bookshelf, next to the sign that says _WORLD POLITICS._ He’s holding a gun to the woman opposite him, and she in turn is holding up one hand – from which has emerged, disturbingly enough, a metal whisk-like device. It seems to have burst out directly from her wrist, and although there’s no blood from the wound, the skin’s clearly ruptured.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” he’s saying, and she’s smiling. Her eyes are hidden behind her tinted glasses; of course they are, and her lips are far too red. In her other hand – the control orb, although it seems utterly inactive.

“Oh darling,” says Nine-Lives Capaldi, “old crooks never die. We just learn some new tricks, and get right back into the game.”

“And old Daleks never die either, I see,” the Doctor says, stepping out from his hiding place, positioning himself neatly between the two of them – facing Capaldi with seemingly no fear whatsoever. “They just – well, fade away, hopefully?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Doctor?” sneers Nine-Lives, angling the device that’s protruding from her wrist to point at the tiny man instead. “Ever a thorn in our side, I see.”

“Fascinating,” says the Doctor, unperturbed. “You’re not speaking with typical Dalek speech patterns, are you? In fact, you seem to have your charming personality entirely intact. Was that intentional, I wonder?”

“A mere design flaw in the resurrection process.” Another cold smile from Nine-Lives. “As time passes, the woman’s consciousness will be entirely subsumed.”

“And by that point, it won’t matter anyway,” the Doctor concludes with a grim little nod. “I see.”

“I’m afraid that I can’t let you do that.” Hitch’s voice is steely.

The Dalek-Nine-Lives swivels with a jerk and looks at Hitch with a condescending smirk sliding across her face – it seems almost robotic.

“What are you going to do?” she says gratingly. “Shoot me?”

“That was the plan,” Hitch agrees, and shoots her.

There is a moment of utterly stunned silence. Nobody seems too sure where they should be looking – at the body of Nine-Lives, now lying motionless on the ground with a hole cleanly through her skull, or at Hitch, who’s quite calmly tucking away his gun.

“That…” Ace begins, sounding unsure. “… _well_. That sure was a solution.”

The Doctor is already bending down to take the control orb from where it’s lying on the ground. “Anticlimatic, I’ll grant you, but certainly effective.”

“It’s… over?” Ruby stares down at her slingshot, unused. With all the build-up, she had been expecting a fight. A brawl, at the very least. She’s almost disappointed, and then she reminds herself that there’s a dead woman who’s even more dead than before lying at their feet.

There is no blood.

“I’ll call in a cleanup team,” Hitch says after another moment of awkward uncertainty. He raises his watch and begins arranging it. “We’ll have to cremate her, I think. Again.”

“Yes,” says the Doctor. “I think that might be wise.”

After they hide the body behind the _WORLD RELIGIONS_ bookcase (hoping that nobody will think to look there before Spectrum arrives), the five of them go back the way they came – through the shelves of books and back to the main entrance. People are staring – possibly at Ace and her baseball bat, or it could just be the fact that there’s been a very loud and conspicuous gunshot in the vicinity only minutes ago.

“Excuse me,” says a librarian just as they’re about to leave. There’s a noticeable quaver in her voice – and her hands.

The Doctor doffs his hat at her, and offers her a charming smile. “Good afternoon, my dear woman. Not to worry – we were just passing through.”

“Just visiting,” Ace chimes in. “Guided tour, you know, it’s a new thing for visitors from out of town. Really exciting.”

“I hadn’t heard…” The librarian trails off. She looks almost hopeful.

Clancy nods. “This is the first time we’ve done it. It’s _really_ cool – there’s a historical re-enactment of the grisly murder that happened here, uh, twelve or so years ago. That was probably the gunshot you heard a while ago.”

“Just stage props,” Hitch explains, showing her his entirely real, very loaded gun.

“Also,” says Ruby, “the architecture here’s _exquisite_.”

There is a long beat. The librarian looks like she wants to be convinced, but the overwhelming strangeness of the situation is making it very, very hard for her.

“All right,” she says eventually, in a very small voice, and then, in a rush: “Miss Redfort, you still have five books overdue from last week, please-return-them-soon-to-avoid-more-fines thankyou.”

Ruby winces. “Oh – yeah. I’ll get onto that… soon. Or something.”

The librarian actually _bows,_ an awkward little bend of the spine, and then scurries away – possibly into eternal hiding for the rest of her life, if the terror on her face is anything to go by.

“Once I forgot to return a book to the greatest library in the world for nearly three lifetimes,” the Doctor says off-handedly as they proceed once more towards the exit. “Returning it caused no end of trouble, let me tell you.”

“Well, that puts things in perspective,” Hitch says. “That’s one hell of an overdue fine.”

“As it turned out, the librarians there were all genocidal bastards,” says Ace, shrugging. “I have no idea why you still feel guilty about it, Professor, honestly…”

It’s still raining outside.

“The Dalek mothership will still be somewhere overhead, waiting for the signal,” the Doctor comments, glancing up into the sky as if he can somehow see spaceships hovering in the stratosphere. “And as long as the control orb is still active –”

“So what you’re saying is, we’ve gotta break it?” Ruby asks.

“We’ve gotta break it,” the Doctor agrees. “Miss Redfort – if you’d care to do the honours?” He holds out the control orb to her with a slightly raised eyebrow.

“You know what, Doc, there’s nothing I’d like more,” she says, taking it from him, and then looks at Ace, realizing the tragedy of the situation – that the older girl never got the chance to put her trusty-looking baseball bat into action. “But – Ace, you play baseball, right?”

“Used to,” says Ace, casting a glance at her bat. “Not recently, though… wait. Carrots, you’re not saying?”

“Go long!” Ruby says – an invitation. She tosses the control orb up high in the air, and catches it easily as it comes down.

“Wrong game!” Ace calls back, but nevertheless does so – sprinting down the street with her bat bouncing up-and-down on her shoulder. Ruby waits until she’s just the right distance away, and then swings her arm back and forth in preparation for the pitch.

“Batter up!” Clancy calls from the steps of the library.

The Doctor waves them on with a smile. “Play ball!” he calls out magnanimously.

Ruby lets out a loud whoop and throws the control orb, sending it spinning through the rain. Ace swings, laughing, and the bat connects solidly with the orb, shattering it into millions upon millions of tiny glittering fractals of pieces.

For a moment, time seems to freeze.

Then there is a tiny, near-inaudible snap, and the glasslike substance that the orb was made up of goes flying everywhere – on the gravel road, the grass nearby, getting all over Ace’s jacket and in her hair. It’s been completely and utterly destroyed.

“You know, I’m not too familiar with the rules of baseball,” says Hitch, “but I’d say that was a home run.”

“Mission successful, I think,” the Doctor agrees, leaning on his umbrella.

“Are you kidding me; she just broke our only ball!” Ruby complains loudly from a short distance away. “And the game only just started!”

The Doctor goes digging through those terrifyingly bottomless pockets once more, and produces a cricket ball. He frowns at it for a second, and then holds it up in the air, as if presenting it for inspection.

“That’ll do,” says Ace with a shrug.

Clancy runs down to join them, taking the ball from the Doctor. Ruby swaps places with him, running out to where left field would be if they were actually playing baseball. As it turns out, Clancy pitches a surprisingly good fastball, and it takes Ace so completely by surprise that she ends up dropping the bat and cursing lightly.

They end up playing a high-spirited game of mostly improvised baseball for nearly a full hour, and some neighbourhood kids that aren’t in school at the moment join them. There is laughter and yelling and scraped knees, and it’s generally a lot of very good fun.

Initially, the Doctor and Hitch merely watch from the steps of the library in amused silence, but then Ruby complains at Hitch pointedly and pulls some very skilled precisionguilt-tripping on him, and he throws his hands up in the air in exasperation and goes to join the field team. Shortly after, Ace points out that the teams are no longer made up of even numbers, throws in a promise to not play with dangerous chemicals for a week, negotiates for an extra thirty seconds about spoon-playing, and that’s how the other team ends up with a very short, very Scottish batter that insists on holding the bat like he’s playing cricket.

(And Ace’s team wins, seven-to-three.)


	5. Chapter Five

They return to the TARDIS, and after a quick jaunt forwards in time, are back in LB’s office, seconds after they left.

“Sorted,” says Ace smugly, slamming the eyestalk she ripped off of Nine-Live’s hand onto LB’s desk.

“Excellent,” says LB. “I don’t want to know about any of it.”

“Don’t you?” The Doctor joins Ace, as do the other three. “It’s a thrilling tale, honestly, albeit rather shorter than I was expecting it to be –”

“Thank you Doctor,” sighs LB, “sir. But I think I’ll pass. You saved the town. That’s enough for me – I don’t need to know the grisly details.”

“Very well, then. We’ll meet again, LB,” says the Doctor with a little bow and a tip of his hat.

LB rolls her eyes. “Yes, no doubt. At some point across time, I suppose.” She turns to Hitch, and shoves every single scrap of paperwork on her desk in his direction. “Hitch, please deal with this. I may get paid a frankly _extravagant_ fee near-daily in the process of keeping this town and this state safe from any number of things, but it still isn’t nearly enough to compensate for the _aliens._ I’m going home.”

Hitch looks like he’s going to argue for a moment. “I need to take Ruby and Clancy – “

“We don’t need a babysitter,” Ruby argues, but the Doctor raises a hand and smoothly interrupts.

“It’s all right,” he says. “I can walk them home.”

* * *

 

So Ace and the Doctor head out of Spectrum Eight with Ruby and Clancy, emerging very close to Chatterbird Square, and the four of them spend a pleasant ten-or-so minutes walking to Clancy’s house and chatting about all and any topics that come to mind – mostly about chemistry, oddly enough.

“No, look, it’s super simple,” Ace is arguing in Clancy’s direction when they finally reach Ambassador Row. “You just need to make sure the nitroglycerin is fully stabilized before you take it out of the sodium bicarbonate – that’s the most dangerous part since the rest is chemical mixing and that’s just like cooking, honestly –“

“And the safety goggles,” the Doctor interjects, rather insistently. “It doesn’t matter how careful you are in the lab. There’s always the chance that something can go wrong. But really now, Ace –”

“I feel like I should be taking notes,” Clancy admits. He appears genuinely interested in the conversation. “All right, but where do I get all this stuff? I don’t think the school chem lab would let me borrow the, uh, what was it… sulphuric acid?”

“I could probably steal some,” Ruby volunteers, just as Ace says, “you can make it at home!”

“Ace,” says the Doctor warningly.

“All you need is a car battery,” Ace explains eagerly. “You just hack it open, drain the acid – use gloves _seriously_ that stuff gives well-nasty burns – and then you heat it until –”

“ _Aaaaace,_ ” goes the Doctor, louder this time.

Ace is still talking over him. “Now getting the nitric acid, that’s the hard part – you might actually need to steal that stuff,” she adds with a slight frown.

“ _ACE._ ”

“Ow, Professor, get off – what is it?”

He gives her a severe look that is _very_ professorial in manner. “Stop co _rrrrrr_ upting the youth,” he trills at her.

“Hey, I like being corrupted,” Ruby protests. Clancy murmurs agreement.

The Doctor holds up his umbrella magnanimously, bringing an end to the conversation. “We’re here,” he says.

They drop Clancy off at his front door step, exchange goodbyes, and then – oddly enough – the Doctor tells Ace to go wait for him at the TARDIS.

“Sidelined again,” she sighs, rolling her eyes. “I’m beginning to think you don’t want me around.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He swings up his umbrella tip, and with unerring accuracy, taps her on the nose. She doesn’t flinch, just pokes her tongue out at him. “I shan’t be long. I have a short denouement to perform, and then we’ll be off.”

“Back in a tick?” Ace asks. She’s grinning again.

“Two, perhaps,” the Doctor says, smiling. It has the feeling of an inside joke, or maybe something that’s just going over Ruby’s head. “Two or three – but only if the input remains stable!”

Ace laughs. It’s a proper, delighted laugh. “You really have no idea what you’re doing, do you, Professor?”

“Never!” he proclaims, rather proudly. “Oh yes, never – well, hardly ever. Plans are tricky things, you know. Come along, Miss Redfort,” he adds to Ruby, clapping a hand to her shoulder. “Your home awaits, and I’ve kept you busy for far too long today.”

“Bye, Ace!” Ruby calls over her shoulder, even as they go their separate ways. “It was – well, _wicked_ knowing you!”

Ace winks; throws a jaunty salute back in her direction. “See you, Carrots!”

And that’s that.

The walk back to Ruby’s house is mostly silent, until they get within the confines of her local neighbourhood. And then Ruby decides to start asking a few questions that have been bothering her this whole time. She starts with the easiest one – or so she thinks. “What’s your doctorate in, anyway? Convoluted metaphors?”

“Metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology,” he says without missing a beat. “Or did I not mention that before?”

Ruby is getting the distinct feeling that he’s messing with her, intentionally. “That’s a pretty long job description for such a short guy.”

“You’re the youngest member of an organization that regularly expects you to outwit dangerous, borderline psychopathic criminals,” he says, apparently entirely unoffended. “That’s quite a lot of responsibility for such a young girl.”

“I can handle it. I’m pretty smart.”

“You are,” he says, smiling. “Tell me, what do you think of the assertion that the semiotic thickness of a performed text varies according to the redundancy of auxiliary performance codes?”

“That literally means nothing,” Ruby says after a second of puzzling it out. “I can use big words too, Doc. Here’s one for you – ‘prevarication’.”

“That’s an excellent word, although rather loaded, wouldn’t you agree?” He shoots her an unreadable look. “I’m not lying, Miss Redfort, not to you, at least.”

“No, you’re not,” Ruby agrees thoughtfully. “Just misdirecting…”

They continue on from there in silence, and before long they’re standing in front of the Green-wood House on the corner of Cedarwood Drive.

“I guess this is goodbye, then,” says Ruby.

“I guess it is.” Another one of those unreadable smiles. “I don’t suppose you have any further questions, now that our brief acquaintance is reaching its end?”

“You know I do,” says Ruby after a second.

“Do I?” He seems genuinely confused, but that could mean anything.

She sighs. “Just tell me, Doctor,” she says. “How did you do the coin trick? I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I still haven’t worked it out. It’ll bug me for the rest of my _life_ if I don’t know – _please._ ”

There is a beat of silence. “I really, genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She then realizes with a start that he probably actually doesn’t. “Back in the diner,” she says. “You did – or you’re going to do – some sort of weird trick with a coin. You made it vanish out of my hands. You do know how to do that, right?”

He nods, slowly. “I do,” he says. “But a magician never reveals his secrets.”

“You’re not a magician.”

“Aren’t I?” he says, raising an eyebrow, and then, “oh, very well.” A moment passes, like he’s trying to figure out how to word something properly.

“Consider the common cylinder,” he says at last.

Ruby frowns, not sure how this is relevant. “All right,” she says cautiously. “I’m considering it.”

“Excellent! Now imagine, if you will, a very sharp knife.”

“At the same time?” Ruby grins. “That’s a bit of a tall order, Doc, I’m not sure I can do that.”

The Doctor lets out a theatrical sigh, and goes to take a seat on the wooden bench, placing his umbrella over his knees. “Oh, very _well_ – you can imagine the cylinder and I shall imagine the knife for you. Acceptable?”

“Sure.” Ruby comes over to sit next to him, and affects extreme concentration for a moment or two. “Okay, I’m imagining the cylinder. It’s blue, by the way. Does it matter how big it is?”

“Not especially. Although it would probably be best if we try to co-ordinate the respective sizes of our imagined appliances, for expediency’s sake – well. Never mind that. Now, if you would take my knife – carefully now, it’s rather sharp…”

It’s silly – very silly – but Ruby plays along for the moment, accepting the proffered imaginary piece of kitchenware. “What do I do with this?”

“Why, cut the cylinder in two, of course,” the Doctor tells her, leaning back. “Any way you’d like. Be quick about it, too, I’m not sure if I can imagine the knife for very long.”

“All right, done. Do you want your knife back?”

“You can hold on to it for the moment,” he says. “To the point: look at the cross-section that you’ve formed by slicing your cylinder in two. Tell me, what shape have you made?”

“Uhh.” Ruby thinks for a second, pictures the imagined cylinder cut straight down the middle. “A circle.”

“I see. And if you were to put the cylinder back together, and cut it a different way?”

“A rectangle. Or a square, depending on how long the cylinder is.”

“Anything else?”

“An oval,” Ruby says after a split second of consideration. “I think that’s it.”

“And if you were to see a circle, or a rectangle, or an oval anywhere else – written down somewhere, perhaps – your first thought upon seeing it wouldn’t be ‘cylinder’, would it?”

“Um. No?”

“And yet we can agree that all three of these basic shapes are part of a cylinder, somewhat intrinsically, even if they aren’t immediately visible, or associated with being such. Yes?”

“Uh, yeah. I mean, yes.”

The Doctor nods, seemingly content that he’s explained… whatever… sufficiently. He leans back once more, apparently satisfied. “Well, there you are.”

Ruby stares at him for a full fifteen seconds.

“I don’t get it,” she says eventually.

The Doctor doesn’t exactly look _disappointed,_ more… vaguely annoyed. But at himself, not her. “Oh dear,” he says. “Maybe that was slightly too abstract. Very well, then. Imagine that you’re a two-dimensional creature, occupying a two-dimensional space in a two-dimensional universe.”

Ruby gives up on trying to work out what he was leading up to, deciding instead to just try to follow along for the moment. “Length and width, no depth. That’d mean I’d basically be a stick figure, right?”

“Exactly. And in this hypothetical world of ours, where you are and always have been two-dimensional, you would have no concept of anything beyond that – you wouldn’t be aware of anything such as depth or volume, let alone what a creature occupying a full three dimensions would look like.”

“Yeah, that follows,” Ruby agrees. “So?”

The Doctor spreads his hands out before him. “So. You’re living your life, day-to-day, in this flat world of yours – whatever that entails. And along comes somebody else, somebody existing in three-dimensional physical space – let’s say Ace – who can view and interact with your world. And for whatever reason, be it simple curiosity or for some higher purpose, Ace decides to stick her hand directly into the centre of your two-dimensional reality. What would you, a being watching it, see?”

“Um, it depends.”

“Depends?” he says. “How?”

“It’s like the cylinder,” Ruby says. “Depending on where you cut it, or insert your hand, I guess; it could – well, it could look like five separate circles or your flat hand-print shape, or a large oval, or – I don’t know. There’s a lot of possibilities. It could look like anything.”

“So,” he says. “You see whatever the higher-dimensional creature wants you to see.”

“I get it,” says Ruby, “but at the same time I _don’t_ get it.”

“That would be because I haven’t quite finished yet,” he says, with the barest hint of a smile. “Consider the possibility of manipulation.”

“You’re being confusing again.”

“The creature that’s above and around and beyond you – they might not be Ace anymore; they might be more malicious or maybe simply curious. Either way, they decide that instead of simply _touching_ your world, they will attempt to manipulate it in some way. Let us say that they intend to pick up an object – a coin, maybe – from your dimension, and move it to another area of the world. How would you go about stopping them from doing that?”

“I – you couldn’t,” says Ruby. “Or… I guess you _could,_ but it’d be really difficult, because you couldn’t see them coming, and they could dip into the world at literally any point in the environment.”

“Exactly,” says the Doctor. “Like snatching fish from a pond. They’d be there one second, and gone the next.”

Ruby’s eyebrows raise. “That actually makes sense. Kind of. Wait! – would that work with higher dimensions? Like, instead of it being a 2D world and a 3D being, could a four-dimensional being interact with the three-dimensional world? That’s _weird._ ”

“Well, yes,” says the Doctor, rather quietly. “That was rather the point I was trying to make.”

Ruby is silent for a second. “…so how do you do the trick?” she asks.

She’s almost afraid of the answer.

The Doctor stands up, and places his umbrella carefully down on the bench next to Ruby before taking several careful strides away from her so he’s standing on the opposite side of the sidewalk. He holds up his hands suddenly, palms facing out, and wiggles his fingers, flipping his hands over, and then proceeds to roll up the sleeves of his jacket for good measure. He raises his eyebrows, as if seeking confirmation, and Ruby nods. There’s nothing there – nothing at all up his sleeves.

Suddenly, with a short, sharp motion as if he’s plucking an arrow out of thin air, he moves to snatch something from the empty space in front of him. And then there’s something glistening in his grip, silver and shiny and new, and he holds it up to the sky like he’s trying to measure it up to the moon.

Ruby’s hand, instinctively, shoots to her jeans pocket, where she had put her coin earlier. The napkin from the diner is still there but – maybe on some level unsurprisingly – the nickel is gone.

But the Doctor isn’t finished yet. He flips the coin up with practiced ease, and sends it skittering up and down his hand and fingertips, each turn flashing brighter and brighter, and then, when Ruby is more-or-less utterly entranced by this seemingly improvised routine, cries out, pointing: “look! Isn’t that a Venusian Shanghorn stampeding through the centre of Chatterbird Square?”

It’s so startling and so sudden that Ruby does, in fact, look – twisting around over the back of the bench despite not really understanding why she’s doing it. There’s nothing to see, of course, but even as she’s in that brief moment where she hasn’t quite processed what’s going on, she feels something brush past the side of her head, ruffling her hair and pulling it back. And then there is the distinct sensation of somebody carefully, gently, pressing something into place just behind her left ear, and then her hair is smoothed back into place and she’s spinning around once more to gape at the Doctor. And he hasn’t moved an inch, except his hands are once again presented to her, utterly empty, and he’s staring at her almost expectantly.

Slowly, almost disbelievingly, Ruby reaches up to the left side of her head, and produces a nickel from behind her own ear.

She holds it out gingerly in front of her, and just stares at it for a moment.

“Oh,” she says, trying to understand, and then, “so, you’re…?”

“Yes.”

“And – so. You must be…”

“Alien, yes. That’s also correct.”

Ruby’s finding it difficult to form full sentences. “And. You can.”

“I tend not to do it very often,” he says – is he even a _he?_ Would it be impolite to ask? – looking almost guilty. He hasn’t become some Lovecraftian, otherworldly monster when she’s not looking. She can’t see any tentacles, or extradimensional appendages – although, come to think of it, they wouldn’t be visible if he didn’t want to show them, would they? Despite the mind- and reality-bending feat he’s just performed, he’s still just a diminutive figure in a silly costume with a hat perched on his head, and he still reminds her inescapably of a weird yet endearing uncle. “Only when absolutely necessary. And for party tricks – that’s very important.” A flash of a grin. “Always best to impress the right people, you know.”

Ruby wants to ask if he’s absolutely sure she’s the _right person_ to be imparted with this information but somehow, incredibly, doesn’t. Instead, she tugs the napkin out from her pocket; the one with the fly doodles and the cascade of words, the one that’s torn in two – and she holds it out to him. “Here,” she says, and at his questioning stare. “You’ve got a meeting to keep with my younger self, and a – what did you call it? – casual loop to preserve.”

“I see.” He takes the napkin. “And a coin trick to perform, I suppose?”

“Don’t be too disappointed if I’m not impressed,” Ruby tells him.

He laughs. “I won’t.” And then: “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Redfort,” the Doctor tells her, more solemnly, and extends a hand in her direction. “I look forward to hearing of your further misadventures in the future.”

She takes his hand and shakes it, equally as solemn. It’s too cold to be a human’s hand, and slightly clammy too, but he has a firm grip and his eyes are kind. “Same here, Doctor.”

(Despite everything, she suspects he’s somehow more human than Nine-Lives could have ever hoped to be.)

He walks her to the front door of her house, nods goodbye, and then leaves without further comment. Ruby watches him retreat into the mist, twirling his red-handled umbrella like a conductor’s baton all the way down the street. He reaches the end, pauses for a moment, and then continues walking.

Then the Doctor – strange, wonderful, impossibly vivid and never to be erased from her memory – well, he’s gone.

**end**


End file.
